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Friday, December 23, 2011

The first Over The Edge: Open Reading of 2012 takes place in Galway CityLibrary on Thursday, January 19th, 6.30-8.00pm. The Featured Readers are Dearbhaile Houston, Damian Cunniffe & Leanne O’Sullivan. This is a very special occasion as it is now exactly nine years since Over The Edge was born in Galway City Library in January 2003.

Dearbhaile Houston grew up in Co. Galway. She is in her first year of New Media and English at the University of Limerick, learning the art of procrastination and strong coffee. She began attending Creative Writing classes with Susan Millar DuMars last spring and recently won the Seán Uí Riordáin prize for poetry in the Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary Competition 2011.

Damian Cunniffe is from Abbeyknockmoy in North County Galway. In 2011 he was longlisted for the Fish Publishing International Short Story Prize, the Ink Tears Prize and was joint winner of the Lonely Voices Short Story Introductions competition run by the Irish Writers Centre. He was also runner-up in the fiction section of the 2011 Over The Edge New Writer Of The Year competition. His work has been published in Crannóg and the Cúirt Journal. Damien has had articles published in several newspapers, including the Galway Advertiser. He is currently working on a play and a collection of short stories.

Leanne O’Sullivan was born on the Beara Peninsula in west Cork in 1983, and now lives in Cork city. Her poetry collections are Waiting for My Clothes (2004) and Cailleach: The Hag of Beara (2009) both published by Bloodaxe Books. Her work has been included in various anthologies, including Selina Guinness’ The New Irish Poets and Billy Collins’s Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry. In 2009 Leanne was awarded the Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary; in 2010 she won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature; and in 2011 she received the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.

As usual there will be an open-mic after the Featured Readers have finished. New readers are always most welcome. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748.

Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council & The Arts Council.

This course is for writers who are at work on a project. This could be a novel, short story, collection of stories, sequence of poems, or even a play or film script.

Participants’ only homework each week will be to read two fifteen page extracts from other students’ manuscripts and be prepared for a 20-30 minute discussion on same. Providing generous and specific feedback on others’ work helps us to be inspired risk takers in our own writing. Each participant will experience at least one such session of feedback on their own work. An in-class writing exercise at the start of each class will serve to further shake off mental cobwebs, and perhaps lead us into new writing.

This is an ideal course for the hardworking but isolated writer.

The course is takes place on Tuesdays (2-4pm) starting on Tuesday February 7th and runs for six weeks. Places must be booked in advance. The cost to participants is €85 with a concession rate of €75. To register contact Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway. Telephone 091-565886. Email: victoria@galwayartscentre.ie

Facilitator Susan Millar DuMars’ debut poetry collection, Big Pink Umbrella, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2008. Her next collection, Dreams for Breakfast, appeared in 2010. Her work features in Landing Places, Dedalus’ 2010 anthology of immigrant poetry written in Ireland; and also in The Best OfIrish Poetry 2010. A fiction writer as well, she published a collection of short stories, Lights In TheDistance, with Doire Press in 2010. She has been the recipient of an Arts Council Literature Bursary for her stories. Susan teaches creative writing to adults and to groups with special needs. She lives in Galway, where she and her husband have run the Over the Edge readings series since 2003. Susan is currently at work on her third poetry collection, The God Thing, to be published in early 2013 by Salmon.

Intermediate Creative Writing with Susan Millar DuMars takes place one evening per week (Tuesday) from 7-9.30pm (8 weeks) It commences on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012. Advance booking is essential. Places cost €120. This class is suitable for those who’ve participated in creative writing classes before or begun to have work published in magazines. Flexible exercises and work-shopping of assignments, together with the study of the works of published writers, will help each class member to find their own writing voice.

To book a place in either class contact GTI, Father Griffin Road, Galway.

Jack McCann was born in Rush, County Dublin in 1949, one of three children. He was brought up in Malahide and studied Medicine in UCD. After many years of training and travelling, he settled with his family in Galway in 1989 as a Consultant Plastic Surgeon. In 2004 he visited Albania for the first time and in 2005 he and his wife co-founded the charity “Irish Friends of Albania”. He has returned twice a year since then with teams of volunteers to work in hospitals and this has inspired many of his poems. In 2009 he joined Galway University Hospital Writers Group and is now a member of KARA Writers Group. He has written four plays and is currently working on his next collection of poetry. He retired from hospital practice in 2010 and now enjoys writing, farming, sailing and family. He has three adult children and two grandchildren, and lives with his wife Moya in Oughterard, County Galway.

The December Over The Edge: Open Reading takes place in Galway City Library, St. Augustine Street, Galway on Thursday, December 15th, 6.30-8pm. The Featured Readers are Maeve Mulrennan, Christopher Meehan & Tamar Yoseloff.

Maeve Mulrennan grew up in County Kildare. She studied Arts Administration and Policy at NUI Galway is currently Visual Arts Office at Galway Arts Centre. An experience visual artist, Maeve recently began writing fiction. She attended Celeste Augé’s short fiction class at Galway Arts Centre earlier this year and in October took part in the annual Over The Edge Fiction Slam. This is Maeve’s first major public reading of her work.

Christopher Meehan is originally from Kilkee in County Clare but has been living in Kinvara, Co. Galway since 2008. Christopher holds a B.A. degree in Heritage Studies and was awarded a Master of Science degree in 2007 for research conducted on the wildfowl populations of the Western Lakes. It is this interest in nature, landscape, Irish heritage and our interaction with these elements that strongly influences his writing. He has attended creative writing classes and workshops run by Susan DuMars in Galway and has published papers based on his ornithological work.

Tamar Yoseloff was born in the U.S. in 1965, but has lived in the U.K. since 2007. Her first collection, Sweetheart (Slow Dancer Press, 1998) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and the winner of the Aldeburgh Festival Prize. She received a New Writers’ Award from London Arts for her second collection, Barnard’s Star (Enitharmon Press, 2004). In 2005 she was Writer in Residence at Magdalene College, Cambridge. She divides her time between London and Suffolk, and is currently working on her first novel. Her most recent poetry collection, The City with Horns, was published in May by Salt Publishing and her work also features in the anthology Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (Spring 2010, Bloodaxe).

There will be an open-mic when the Featured Readers have finished. This is open to anyone who has a poem or story to share. New readers are always especially welcome. The MC for the evening will be Susan Millar DuMars. For further details phone 087-6431748 Over The Edge acknowledges the ongoing generous financial support of Galway City Council and The Arts Council.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

We are delighted to announce that we have been informed today that Over The Edge is to receive a 14% increase in Arts Council funding for 2012.

In a joint statement Over The Edge co-organisers, Susan Millar DuMars and Kevin Higgins, said: "This is a really outstanding result, especially given the current economic context. It puts Over The Edge on an absolutely firm foundation for the coming year. We would like to thank the Arts Council for their support."

We look forward to seeing many of you at the final 'Over The Edge: Open Reading' of 2011 in Galway City Library on Thursday, December 15th, 6.30-8pm, when the Featured Readers will be Christopher Meehan, Maeve Mulrennan & Tamar Yoseloff.